A Bit of Background

What is non-violence?
Most broadly, non-violence is a way of doing social change.  In its broadest  sense it means adopting organizational forms that are maximally democratic  and empowering for participants and using forms of action that cut away  at the power of oppressors while not offering anything that can be construed  as a physical threat to them.

It is not "passive resistance": calling it that implies that only violence  is active.   Non-violent action requires that participants be extremely  ethically and morally active, even - especially - in the face of direct  physical reppression.

Nor does it mean that there will be no violence at a given protest.  All it means is that protesters commit to not using violence.  Any violence will come from police, army, private security guards or company thugs.

Below is an outline of what seems to be the broad situation in Australia.  I want to emphasise that this is intended as an intro for people not familiar with the ideas.  It's certainly not an attempt to caricature one group to the benefit of another.  If you are a member of an activist group that you think gets a raw deal below, please don't hesitate to contact me and suggest an alternative wording.

If you know about this stuff already, and want to get out of here now, this will take you back to the index page.  This next link, on the other hand, will take you back to the main Non-violence page.

Large-N versus small-n non-violenceIt's useful to distinguish "large N" Nonviolence from "small n" nonviolence in the same way that there is a difference between large-C Conservative and small-c conservative, or large-S Socialist as against small-s socialist.  That is, the large-letter kind tends to be the name of an organization with a specific set of practices and power relations: there are many kinds of socialist, and relatively few are members of the ISO or the DSP; similarly, the historical current of liberal thought overlaps with the modern Liberal Party in Australia, but is by no means coterminous.

There have been large-N Nonviolence organizations in Australia - the most prominent was probably the Melbourne Rainforest Action Group, and there is still a residual large-N Australian Nonviolence Network.  In this country, large-N Nonviolence tends to involve a complex set of training practices and decision-making practices.  This makes it potentially elitist in that only a trained few can take part.  However this approach has been used on a large scale at the Franklin and elsewhere.  Whatever its effectiveness, it is widely viewed as purist and exclusive.  For myself, while being familiar with and generally sympathetic to this approach, I count myself as more inclined to small-n nonviolence. But what is that?  For me, it's the idea that as social change activists we have to maintain maximum flexibility and we have to be able to see ourselves as part of the history of our own place.  I would want to include within such a picture all attempts at social change that specifically eschew violence,  whether philosophically or strategically.  This includes Trade Union struggles,  Aboriginal struggles, environmental struggles, women's struggles and gay/lesbian  struggles.

This carries with it some responsibilities.  To me it is simply exploitative to want to claim to be part of a stream of Australian history that includes the early Trade Union 8-hour workday campaigns, and then slag current unions as 'reformist' or whatever, especially when they are facing a resurgence of struggles that were won decades ago.  Similarly, it is unfair to claim the Gurindji strike of the late 60s and early 70s as part of the history of your movement and then attack the Mirrar for wanting control over their destiny.  Room for disagreement and criticism, yes.  Disparagement, no.  If we want to regard ourselves as part of the great tapestry of human liberation in this country, then is it important to indeed see ourselves as part, not as the all-knowing perfect epitome of how to think and what to do.

"Non-violent" versus "not violent"
Seen this way, the term "non-violent" seems very broad.  To narrow down its application, it's worth making a distinction between groups that identify themselves or their strategic approach as "non-violent" and those for whom their actions happen to not be violent.

Broadly, Marxist groups tend to prefer not to use the term non-violent about themselves: they may think it restricts their ideological openness to the use of revolutionary violence, or they may accept the definition of 'non-violent' as equating to passive.  They are often happy to call particular actions or protests non-violent.  Many people active in explicitly non-violent groups dispute that Marxist groups are 'non-violent': this may be because Marxist groups admit freely that they would be willing to use violence under revolutionary circumstances; it may also be because explicitly non-violent groups see the behaviour of Marxist groups in protests as violent, since the latter often aim to mobilise mass participation and politicization through tapping into anger, whereas explicitly non-violent groups would seek to channel anger away into other emotions (the argument goes that it's not that anger is a bad thing, but that it clouds the judgment at a time when the effect of a protest depends on maximum clarity).

Similarly, groups that are organized with a view to lobbying, or which have elected structures, are often called "not non-violent".  This is because much of the tradition of non-violent organizing is about not having to beg to bureaucrats, and about not creating power-centres within your organization.

"Nonviolent Action" versus "Non-violent Direct Action"
The term "non-violent group" refers to a tendency (or rather a couple of tendencies)  within the environmental and anti-militarist movements in this country and  overseas. In the Australian context at least, there is an important distinction.  Historically,  it seems to stem from the Franklin River campaign of 1982-3, the first time  the particular set of practices I call large-N Nonviolence were employed  - and imposed - on a large scale.

At the Franklin, as participants will remember, participants were required to take part in non-violence training as a condition of getting on the boat to take them to blockade.  The workshops started as being half a day long, and by the end were three days long.  The training involved learning how to act as an affinity group, decision making within one, decision making across affinity groups via a spokes persons group, and a bunch of other stuff.  This is the basis of NA, Nonviolent Action.

Many people, having only a limited time there, found this onerous - and rightly so, to my mind.  Others simply found the whole business irritating - they were there to stop the dam being buuilt and didn't need to be told how to do it.

To my mind, this is where the "NA" versus "NVDA" distinction first  manifested itself, and it has been an important set of disputes at pretty  much every action since.  This comes out in a number of ways (please note,  I am oversimplifying here, and it may be a partial caricature of both sets of groups because of  that.  This is not intended as an insult to either side - it's just an attempt  to simplify):

• Formal Nonviolent Action (NA) insists that any current action is generally mainly a way to get ideas out to a wider public, and therefore actions have to be carefully crafted from a publicity point of view; proponents of NVDA argue that ultimately we will have to actually physically take power from the oppressors, so why not start now?
• From this, proponents of NVDA argue that there are times when destruction of property is acceptable; and that in any case, since we have limited ways of controlling the media, we shouldn't restrict our actions to conform to a media agenda which is generally attacking us (see the page Non-violent social change and the media ).  Some NA activists agree with this position on the media, but argue that nevertheless the more principled we are in our non-violence the better our chances of getting our ideas across.
• In accordance with this, NVDA practitioners argue that there is room for secrecy.  It is argued that while it may be acceptable for a police liaison group at a protest to give information to police about a public event taking place, it is ridiculous for that group to give police information about an action directed at destroying a machine that is essential to the project being opposed, since that would make the action impossible to perform.  Some - but by no means all - practitioners of NA argue that there should be no secrecy at all, and that actions requiring secrecy are not non-violent.  But there is a large variety of positions on this issue, and it is not always as polarized as it looks here.
• The difference also comes out in the way groups organize.  NA has tended to have a very formalized way of doing things - information is shared within a mass meeting, then decision-making within affinity groups, then  affinity groups send representatives to a meeting of representatives  to coordinate decision-making, then the result is referred back to affinity  groups for ratification.  Proponents of NA claim this genuinely guarantees speaking chances to all participants.  Many proponents of NVDA generally  find it unwieldy and time-consuming, and prefer to make decisions in a general  meeting.  In response, proponents of NA argue that making decisions in a  general meeting has the danger that speaking will be dominated by more vocal  individuals.
• NVDA people say NA is elitist, since it requires a fairly high degree of training and agreement, and therefore excludes large numbers of people.  NA people say the degree of training is an advantage.

The arguments go on, with little sign of any attempt to come to a resolution.

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